The Meeting Point by Lucy Caldwell

Author:Lucy Caldwell [Lucy Caldwell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780571270545
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2012-03-13T16:00:00+00:00

He called for her again on Sunday afternoon. She was ready this time. She had changed out of her church clothes, plaited her hair back, rubbed some cream blusher into her cheeks. Noor was there, too – she had come back with Ruth after church, wanting to talk about the sermon, and what it meant. Euan had given the sermon this week, and Ruth had found it contradictory and overzealous. It was one of his set pieces about the life of Jesus, the baby born to a peasant girl; she had heard it tens of times before and found it disingenuous. It was not even Euan’s sermon, really: he had taken and elaborated it from someone else; she remembered hearing it with him at a Mannafest when she was a teenager. But beside her, Noor had listened avidly, hanging on Euan’s every word. She had watched Noor for a while. The girl’s lips were parted and her tongue was slightly out of her mouth, as if it was not enough to hear, she had to inhale, to suck in Euan’s words. Noor’s skin was scattered with a fresh burst of pimples and she had dark, sunken circles under her eyes, badly disguised with concealer. Ruth felt a fresh wave of pity for her, so obviously lonely, and she had taken care to be patient with her, to invite her back to the house to continue their conversation.

It was the charitable thing to do, she told herself.

But perhaps this was not quite, or not entirely true. She was nervous of seeing Farid, equally nervous as she longed to see him. With Noor there – for she would invite Noor along too, on the pretext of needing help with Anna – she would be safe. She could indulge, whilst being protected from, her strange sudden feelings and longings. She was safe, she told herself. With Noor and Anna there, she would be safe.

They drove south, away from Manama, along the eastern coastal road towards Dar Island and the resort of Al Bander. They stopped to look at a flock of upraised dhows, the salted, stippled bows being planed and sanded by dark-faced boys in white headdresses and loose brown kaftans, oiled and repainted by other, older men, who took turns to squat in the shade of the curved prows, or under makeshift canopies of canvas and sackcloth draped from ladders and scaffolding. They stopped a second time when they crossed the causeway bridge from the mainland to Dar Island. Now the view to the east was clear and unimpeded: miles of glittering white sea and whitened sky, past the tip of Qatar and right across the Gulf, hundreds of miles, past uninhabited scattered islets to where the tip of the emirate states reached towards the curve of Iran. As Farid pointed it all out, Ruth laughed and compared it to the Irish Sea – seen from Portavogie, say, or Ballywalter, equivalent little towns and fishing ports – the oily black waters and

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